


Valor's Embassy

by ApocalypseThen



Category: Valor Series - Tanya Huff
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-09
Updated: 2017-02-09
Packaged: 2018-09-21 15:49:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9555860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ApocalypseThen/pseuds/ApocalypseThen
Summary: The mission's been meticulously planned. What could possibly go wrong?





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Skitz_phenom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skitz_phenom/gifts).



"I can do subtle," said Torin. She put her hands on her hips and looked Binti squarely in the eye.

Significant glances were exchanged. Werst -- probably the one best able to defend himself against Torin if it came to hand-to-hand -- drew the short straw. "Gunny. You really can't."

Torin's hands curled into fists but didn't leave her hips. Binti's eyes widened and she puffed out her cheeks. But it was Craig who snickered first. "Come on, love," he said, slipping a muscular arm through the loop of her elbow. "We'll find you some yobboes to stare down. During the extraction maybe?"

Torin let her arm curl around Craig's waist. "I suppose Binti does look better in the dress."

Everyone was intelligent enough not to rise to that bait except Alamber. "Boss, please. You'd be like a _watru_ at a _vytra_ ," he tittered, rolling his eyes.

Torin's teeth were the brightest thing in the galley for a long moment. Then Binti had to bat at Alamber's hands as he started to prod and poke at her, draping her with accessories that he was pulling out of his batwing sleeves seemingly at random. "Quit it!" Binti told him, backing into the corner.

Even scowling, Torin had to admit, Binti was a looker. One who'd look right back at you, if you stared too long.

"Gunny." Ressk waved his slate. "I'm in."

Alamber tore himself away from weaving a ribbon into Binti's hair to grab at the slate, but Ressk transferred it to his foot and held it out of reach. Torin reached over and pushed Alamber away gently. His hair pointed forward eagerly. "Everybody's got a job," she said. She glanced sideways. "And yours is getting away."

Binti shot a betrayed look over her shoulder as she snuck out, hitching her skirts over the bulkhead. Alamber caught up with her a couple of steps later, fussing already.

Werst looked up from his bowl, slurping up the last of his noodles. He grunted at Alamber's departing back. 

"What have you got?" Torin asked. 

"Schematics, mostly. Security protocols. Ah, you're not going to like this part." Ressk laid his slate down and booted up the holographic display. "The ledgers we need aren't networked. They seem to be archived in this room, but there's no detail on these schematics."

Craig cocked his head to the side. "Mate, you need to check your scale. This says a hundred meters."

Werst belched delicately. "Two words: giant spiders."

"People," Torin added. Heads turned to her. "Giant spider people."

Werst looked back at Craig. "What she said."

"Get it off me," Ressk whispered. Torin laid a hand on his shoulder. 

"So the treasure will be at the center of a hundred meter web guarded by giant spider people?" Craig frowned. "Where have I seen that before?"

"Watch much Mictok opera?" asked Werst.

Ressk ignored them. "Webbing's a good guess, Gunny. Access is through this portal, fifty meters up. There's got to be something in there. Even the Mictok can't jump that high."

Torin raised an eyebrow. "You sure? This could just be their gym. Volleyball court. Whatever."

"The inventory says the ledgers are in there. And a whole lot of other stuff. Every other room shows furniture. I'm not wrong."

Werst looked across the table at Ressk and licked his lips, a gesture that Ressk was oblivious to. Craig and Torin caught each other's eye at the same moment. "I like you better in trousers, anyway," Craig whispered.

Torin let the corner of her mouth curl up a fraction before turning her attention back to Ressk. "The ledgers," she said. "Does the inventory say what they look like?"

"There isn't that level of detail," Ressk replied. "It says the accounts for the years we're looking for are there. Nothing else."

"So these ledgers could be electronic, or physical. Or coded into Mictok basket-weave."

Craig put his arm back around Torin's waist. "Not like you to be defeatist, Torin."

Torin shook her head, and stepped away from Craig. "Ressk can figure it out it, whatever it is. And the Krai can climb as well as any giant spider person."

"If he's going, I'm going," said Werst, his nostrils flaring.

"Mictok don't do violence," said Ressk.

"How many Mictok have you met?" Werst challenged.

Ressk looked to Torin for support. "One," he said.

"One serley Mictok?" Werst grumbled. 

"An honourable one," Torin added.

"Well isn't that nice," Werst said. "And if not all Mictok are honourable, like the ones we're probably chasing?"

Torin folded her arms. "Fraudsters. Tax evaders. Not killers."

"You don't know that, Gunny," insisted Werst. "Any Mictok dumb enough to get mixed up with the goons we took down on Estos could do anything if his back was against the wall."

"Giant spider back," Ressk muttered.

Torin sighed inwardly. "You're not going with him because one, you have no chance against even a non-violent Mictok. They can spit out webbing faster than you can climb your way out of it. I've seen it. And two, there's a tuxedo with your name on it. The only way this works is if we have one of each species present for the reception."

"But, Gunny..."

"Do I have to get Alamber in here to accessorize you too?" Torin growled.

The threat was enough to get Werst to pull his feet down off the table and leave, grumbling about serley chikra evening wear and chafing.

"He's sweet," said Craig, "under all that grouch."

"So's yours," Ressk replied off-handedly, nose deep in his slate.

Torin's hands curled into fists for a moment, until she saw Craig's sloppy grin.

\----------  
Six hours later, Torin stood at the table again with her fists curled so hard she was losing feeling in her fingertips. "Who's going first?" she asked, her voice tight.

Alamber's face was hidden in his arms on the table. Every few seconds his hair rose and his whole body quivered, before slumping back. Binti was doing her best to sit up straight and look attentive, but was fighting a losing battle against exhaustion. The sheer fabric of what remained of her dress wasn't helping. She kept sliding down in her chair, her eyes nearly closing, before jolting back up. Werst was the most alert, but he was lying back making mewling noises as Ressk rocked him gently. Ressk himself had his nostrils firmly clamped shut, and was staring at Torin like it was all her fault.

Torin started where she thought she'd have better luck. "Mashona! Report!" she barked.

Binti jolted forward in her seat, nearly falling off it. She caught herself on the edge of the table. Torin could see her arms trembling with the effort of keeping herself off the floor. "Mictok, gunny," she began gamely, her words slurring only a little. "Mictok very good." She lost her fight with the table and slid to a hard landing. "Oops."

Alamber moaned and rolled away from Binti's pratfall. His hair flattened and he tried to bury his head deeper into his arms.

"Werst?" Torin asked, trying to keep the frustration from her voice. She wasn't certain what was wrong with him. Krai were difficult to injure and he didn't look hurt.

Werst keened, a disturbing high-pitched sound that Torin hadn't heard from a Krai before, especially not one that had been at her side through some bad times. He turned his face away from her, burying his nose in Ressk's chest. 

“Torin. Let me try.” Craig didn't try and touch her, not when she was wound this tightly. He edged around her to squat on his haunches across the table from Alamber. He stretched out his arms and worked his hands under Alamber's elbows. “Hey, buddy,” he said. He tried gently to work Alamber's arms out from under his head.

Alamber rolled his head from side to side on the table increasingly vigorously. His hair rose in waves, each one higher than the last. It looked like Craig's touch was warming him right up.

“Can you tell us what happened, chum?” Craig asked in a voice that Torin didn't hear very often. A kind and gentle tone that he used with children. Small children.

Alamber sat bolt upright and took both of Craig's hands in his own. His hair stood tall above him and his smile blazed brightly. “It. Was. Spectacular.” Having made this announcement, he fell forward once again, nose nearly touching the table, before pulling back once again. “Eight arms. Eight. Fukking. Arms.”

This time he crumpled gracefully onto the table and started to snore.

Giving up on Alamber as a waste of time, Torin bent slowly at the waist, her arms held rigidly by her side. She peered under the table. Binti was slumped against Alamber's leg, her mouth hanging open. She wasn't quite unconscious. “Mashona. I need more.”

Ressk brought her up short, his nostril ridges flapping open for a moment before he spoke. “Gunny. There was no ledger. It was a set-up.”

\---------

Torin didn't give Lanh Ng time to let her cool her heels in the waiting room. She blew past his secretary and marched into his office.

“What is it, Kerr, I'm busy,” he snapped. “You already have your next set of orders.”

Torin stood with her feet shoulder width apart and fixed him with her finest glare. “Sir.”

Ng screwed the cap onto his old-fashioned fountain pen and laid it down on the tray that was obviously just for that purpose. “Very well. Let me play detective. You feel used. You think that now that you are no longer in the Confederation Marine Corps, 'need to know' is no longer a concept that applies.” He steepled his fingers and leaned back in his comfy chair like a cartoon villain. “I had to keep your team in the dark as to the true objective. Our friends among the Mictok were very insistent that the participants should be... surprised.” 

He paused. Torin fumed, waiting for more.

“If it helps, the operation was a success. Your team's sexual embassy to the Mictok was quite the hit at the reception. The Mictok news-webs are still spinning it 28/10.” He leaned forward. “And more importantly, their hard-liners are backing away from prolonging their embargo on exports to the Younger Races indefinitely.”

“Politics,” Torin spat. Orgies were a strange way to go about politics, but that didn't stop Torin's natural distaste for statemanship. And her sending her people in there like that, prepared only for a little light-fingered breaking and entering. Not heavy petting at the Mictok zoo.

“It's always politics,” Ng threw back at her. “Except you actually made a difference, this time.” He grinned wolfishly. “The other special operations teams aren't nearly as good-looking. Now, if you don't mind.” He picked up his pen again and turned his attention to his paperwork.

Only years of experience dealing with the arcane ways of the Corps stood between Ng and a mess of paperwork. Form for stabbing your supervisor with his antique writing implement, annex: reasons. Use as many pages as you need.

Torin hated being manipulated. At least Binti and Alamber seemed to have enjoyed it. Would probably have volunteered. Werst would be able to make peace with it, once she explained. Duty was almost as important to him as his bonded.

But underneath Torin's anger, compounding it with frustration, a small part of her regretted not trying on the dress.


End file.
